COUNTDOWN (The Sixties Trilogy)

Because I am a HUGE Deborah Wiles fan, I had to have an ARC of her new book, COUNTDOWN. I have been reading so much about it and once it ended up on Betsy's very early Newbery prediction list at Fuse #8, I knew I had to have it. So, Sally at Cover to Cover let the Central Ohio begging blogger group borrow her copy. Even though I don't want to let it go because I LOVE it, I will be passing it along to Bill at Literate Lives tomorrow. I hate the fact that I'll have a few weeks without the book.

This book takes place in the early 1960s, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And although the setting and history are critical to the story, the real story is about Franny and her family. (It isn't often that I read a book with a main character named Frances, either!). As we have come to expect from Wiles, the characters are the best. Such amazing characters. Such amazing relationships and such real issues.

The brilliance in this book is the way that Wiles embedded primary source documents throughout the story of Franny. She embedded real words, photos, and more at the perfect point in the story. When I first looked through the book, I thought they might be distracting but they are placed perfectly and the pieces she's chosen help you understand exactly what the characters are going through and what those days felt like to people living through it. It is really brilliant. I didn't know much about the Cuban Missile Crisis but my thinking is that if our kids could learn history in this way, it would make so much more sense.

This book is up there as one of my favorite books of all time. If I were in a 5th or 6th grade classroom, it would definitely be on my read aloud list.

There is so much to love about the books. For me, as always, it was primarily a great story about great characters that I came to love. But the brilliance in craft was key. The documentary style pieces helped to create an understanding that readers could not have done otherwise.

The even better news than the fact that this is an amazing book is that I read that it is the first in a trilogy about the 60s. I just can't wait.

Really, this is a must, must, must read. I can so understand why Betsy included it on her Newbery list so early in the year. I am not alone in my love for this book. It has already received 3 starred reviews (Kirkus, Booklist, and the Hornbook)!!! And Monica at Educating Alice gave it a great review on her blog too. Really, go preorder one right now.

Poem #11 -- Sunday Night Inertia

Bees have no problem

Leaving work for tomorrow.

Tonight I'm a bee.

by Mary Lee Hahn, copyright 2010

Poetry and the SMART Board--Part 2

We had a great time with Poetry and the SMART Board with 1st Graders today. One of my favorite books for young children (and everyone else) is TANKA TANKA SKUNK! by Steve Webb. This book is great fun--it invites word play and chanting. The kids love to chant and clap along to the rhythm of the words. Since I only have a short time with the kids, the things we do are quick. We read TANKA TANKA SKUNK! which they already love. Then we used the SMART Board and sorted the students names into 1, 2 and 3 syllable columns. Each name immediately became an object that we could move around the board.

Because there are so many repeated words in TANKA TANKA SKUNK!, I taught the kids to duplicate and we wrote our own versions of a piece of the chant. A new chant that followed the rhythm of their favorite page. We used students' names--plugging them in where they would work to meet the rhythm. The kids had a ball and it was interesting to see kids enter at different places. For some kids, syllabication is just starting to make sense. For others, they loved the challenge of figuring out all of the possibilities for filling in a spot in the chant.

Again, I left the board filled with names available during choice time in the library. Kids had a great time using the names to create their own rhythms using TANKA TANKA SKUNK! as a model.

Now it is time to find other ways to increase the power of these shared reading experiences with the SMART Board. As these words and illustrations become movable objects, kids can do such amazing works using the SMARTBoard as a tool. Again, the power really came when the kids were using the board without me. After I model a few options for them to begin, I can see them using it in lots of ways during choice time in the library.

Poem #10 -- Life Lesson

Be careful when

indulging in

extravagant

self

pity.

The Universe

is more than glad

to give a new

per-

spective.

A hole in your

hot water tank...

now there's a REAL

life

worry.

photo and poem by Mary Lee Hahn, copyright 2010

I played with rhythm today.

Seemed appropriate since the hot water tank played with the rhythm of my LIFE.

Poetry and the SMART Board

We are getting ready to have the SMART Board in the library moved to a different location so we haven't used it much. But this week, the 2nd and 3rd graders used it for Poetry Writing and revision. What a powerful tool for Writing Workshop. I can see the possibilities of a SMART Board in a workshop classroom.

Today, I taught a lesson similar to lessons I've taught before. I think I originally got the idea from Georgia Heard, author of FOR THE GOOD OF EARTH AND SUN. She suggests a collaborative poem and I have always found the lesson to be a powerful one--one that really moved kids in their poetry writing strategies. This is a whole group lesson in which everyone contributes a line or phrase about something that is common--the morning, a tree, an experience--something that everyone can write about. You can get the phrases in several ways. Everyone can write a bit about the topic and then choose a line they love. Or they can just brainstorm lines. There are several ways. Following the sharing of lines, everyone can use the common language to create a poem. It is always amazing how different each poem is when they all come from the same list of words.

Well, the SMART Board made this lesson far more powerful than it's ever been. Taught so much about poetry but also gave such great messages about revision and playing with language. One group wrote about our school's courtyard. We looked at it for a while and came up with phrases of things we noticed. Anyone who had a line to contribute to the SMART Board did so. I typed them as kids shared. One class came up with this list:

benches waiting for people
the trees are moving all around
a nest in a tree is in a battle for life or death
bushes barely moving
there is a birdhouse
colorful
shrubs weeping
tulips peeking
I saw a splash of pink and yellow
red, yellow, pink
the tree is waving hi

We then played with the lines, combining them in different ways to create different poems. Since each line automatically became a text box, I typed the lines on the left side of the board. They could be easily dragged over to the right side in any order, thus creating a poem. The end poem that this class came up with, using these words as an anchor was:

Plants

the trees are moving all around
bushes barely moving
splashes of green
shrubs weeping
and
tulips peeking

This whole lesson took less than 15 minutes.

My favorite part was the work that happened after the lesson. I left the page up with the lines available for students who wanted to play with the words a bit more. About 4-5 kids per class (many from our SMART Board Team) chose to continue the work with poetry on the SMART Board. They discovered more about spacing, white space, adding and deleting words, etc. One group decided to begin a whole new poem--using the colored markers to add new phrases. The SMART Board allowed for great revision play and word play--which is exactly how we want writing to feel. This lesson is an old one and the use of the SMART Board was nothing that exciting. But the tool did invite some amazing collaboration and because I have taught similar lessons many, many times over the year, I was amazed at how the use of the SMART Board really lifted the level of collaboration as well as the willingness to play with the language to create something new. And, in the process, they also learned so much about the workings of the Board itself--the problem solving was fun to watch as they discovered new things and gave things a try.

Poem #9 -- More About Those Xs

photo by sczoron

Second grader came up to me

on the playground yesterday,

"Teacher, Teacher! There are so many Xs in the sky!"

I looked up,

and there were two immense contrails

making a huge X in the sky.

And then I turned and saw another...and another...and another...

five Xs in the blue spring sky.

I asked him how he thought they got there

and he said something about airplanes,

but I said I thought a leprechaun put them there

(X marks the spot for treasure)

and he ran off yelling about Xs

and treasure

and I was the rich one.

by Mary Lee Hahn, copyright 2010

I wrote about this yesterday in haiku form. Today's poem is actually the text of an email to a friend telling the whole story. Because she loved it so much (especially the last line), I decided to make it into its own poem.

The Poetry Friday Roundup today is at Paper Tigers.

Here's a reprint of a bunch of the Kidlitosphere (and other assorted) NaPoMo projects that I'm following:

Gregory K. is once again hosting 30 Poets/30 Days with previously unpublished poems by favorite children's authors.

Tricia Stohr-Hunt is interviewing 30 children's poets, beginning with Mary Ann Hoberman, the US Children's Poet Laureate. The Poetry Makers list is stellar!

Jone MacCulloch shares Thirty Days, Thirty Students, Thirty Poems: original poems by students.

Jama Rattigan is posting original poems & favorite recipes by some of the Poetry Friday regulars.

At A Wrung Sponge, Andromeda is writing a "haiga" (photo and haiku) each day. Her photography is simply stunning. The haikus are amazing, too!

Kelly Fineman at Writing and Ruminating will continue the Building a Poetry Collection series she began last year -- selecting a poem a day in a kind of personal Poetry Tag (see Sylvia Vardell's version below) and providing analysis. I call this The University of Kelly Fineman because I learn so much in each post!

Sylvia Vardell is inviting poets to play Poetry Tag. She will invite poets to "play" along by offering a poem for readers to enjoy, then she will "tag" a poet who shares her/his own poem THAT IS CONNECTED to the previous poem in SOME way—by a theme, word, idea, tone-- and offers a sentence or two explaining that connection. What a creative idea!

Laura at Author Amok is highlighting the poets laureate of all 50 states this month...well, all the ones that have a poet laureate... Fun Fun!

Laura Salas is posting a children's poem per day from a poetry book she loves.

Lee Wind is publishing many new Teen voices during April for National Poetry Month. GLBTQ Teen Poetry.

Bud the Teacher gives a picture prompt every day during April and invites readers to post the poem it inspires in the comments of his blog.

ORIGINAL POEM-A-DAY CHALLENGE

Checks these blogs daily for new original poems by the following people:

Susan Taylor Brown

Jone MacCulloch

Elizabeth Moore

April Halprin Wayland

Liz Scanlon

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

If I missed your project, please let me know and I'll add it to my list!

Poem #8 -- When Recess Duty Becomes a Blessing in Disguise: A Haiku

photo by FrancoisRoche

Teacher, Teacher! Look!

There's lots of Xs in the sky!

How did they get there?!?

by Mary Lee Hahn, copyright 2010

Poem #7 Read Aloud Revelation--A Metaphor Poem

Metaphors are wiley creatures,

Usually only found by teachers.

Today one let us glimpse its glory:

"All I'm saying is your life's a story."

by Mary Lee Hahn, copyright 2010

Background:

My fourth graders are reading along as I read aloud 43 Old Cemetery Road, Book One: Dying to Meet You by Kate Klise and illustrated by M. Sarah Klise. (I reviewed it here.) If you know the "Regarding the..." series by the Klise sisters, you have an idea what this book is like -- told entirely through letters, newspaper pages, documents, etc.

Back bulletin board in our classroom:

Currently devoted to similes, metaphors, and idioms written on sentence strips along with a hodge-podge collection of common and uncommon homophones and homographs written on index cards.

Blurted out yesterday during read aloud:

"I think I hear a metaphor!"

The passage containing the metaphor:

"All I'm saying is that your life is a story, and that you are the main character of that story. Is your story a comedy or a tragedy? Is it dull? Or is is a compelling, spine-tingling drama? My point, Iggy, is simply that each of us is the author of his or her own life. So if you're telling me that you've changed, I'm pleased at your authorship."

Poem #6 -- REVERSO!

Back in March, I wrote this Samantha Bennett (That Workshop Book) quote in my writer's notebook:

"When we are thoughtful about the way the day begins and ends, so much more is possible in the middle."

I can't remember where I saw it -- Creative Literacy? Authentic Learner? The blog of someone who was/is reading it in a group or for a class. I wrote it down because I've struggled all my livelong career with the routines at both ends of the school day -- especially the end. So many days end in a whirlwind rush that leaves me exhausted and crabby. I'm constantly working to calm the end of the day down. I've got read aloud tucked in at the very end of the day now, and I like ending our day with our knees pulled together in a tight circle as we share our thoughts around the book we're reading together.

At any rate, operating on the principle that sometimes all it takes to be a poem is short lines, I wrote the quote this way:

When we are thoughtful

about the way the day

begins

and

ends,

so much more is possible

in the middle.

I'm not sure what made me read it from the bottom up. Maybe it's because I've been so fascinated recently with Marilyn Singer's poems in Mirror, Mirror. It made a little bit of sense read bottom to top, so I played around with it and got these two poems. They're a bit clunky, but it was a thrill to even come close on such a complicated form!

In the middle

so much more is possible.

Ending

and

beginning

a day is

when we are thoughtful.

When we are thoughtful,

a day is

beginning

and

ending

so much. More is possible

in the middle.

Poem #5 -- Visitor

If not for Girl Scout cookie sales,

She wouldn't come back to see me,

Wouldn't come telling her theater tales,

Wouldn't help bring back the memory

Of times when life was easier:

A whole world contained in one room

With one set of memories linked to one teacher.

From across my desk, I watch her bloom.

by Mary Lee Hahn, copyright 2010